


vincent fiore must die

by poalimal



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Closeted Character, Deaf/HOH character, Engagement, F/M, Fic in the Time of Quarantine, Infidelity, M/M, Original Characters - Freeform, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:07:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25378891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poalimal/pseuds/poalimal
Summary: This is not a story about Vincent; this is a story without Vincent.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison/Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	vincent fiore must die

Vincent is easy to fall in love with - Vincent is where it all began to be real, for Jack. And so there is no Vincent in this story. I mean, yea, he _exists_ , somewhere: he has hopes and dreams and all that stuff. He just never moves to Indiana; he just never meets Jack. 

He never meets Jack - Jack never falls in love - Jack only ever wonders, vaguely, about men, and his attraction to them. 

Jack's more certain about women. Or about the idea of them, really. And he likes them!, uh, well enough. So why not get serious? If there's no real hang-up? And there's not. So - when his cousin's friend Bev, who lets him stay on her pull-out couch when he first moves to Cali, offers him her bed, he thinks, well, why not? Bev's funny, gorgeous - kind of weird. And they have great chemistry, so they have a great time! In bed. 

Alright - they have an ok time. 

They have a _decent_ time. 

They start dating, is the point. They even - after however many years - they even get engaged. And Jack is definitely looking forward to the wedding. Obviously. I mean, he's been with Bev for... three-- four years, right? (It's been five, she reminds him.) Five - right. Lucky number five! Of course he's looking forward to the wedding. It's just - I mean, sometimes he wakes up in a cold sweat, thinking about it. But that's normal! Everyone tells him it's normal. Pre-wedding jitters - cold feet - whatever you want to call it.

Well - his parents don't tell him it's normal. They wouldn't lie - but they're not that direct, either. In their own way, they both find a way to tell him... that it's not that normal. To doubt this much.

'I never got cold feet,' his dad says, out of literally nowhere, when he calls one Sunday. Hell of a time for him to grow an opinion!

It's only been, what, two-and-a-half months? since they've been planning the wedding. (It's been four months, Bev tells him.) 'With your mom, I just knew. I woulda done whatever it took just to be with her. And if that meant putting up with however many people to get down that damn aisle, then that's what I'd do.' 

'You know how I knew, with your father?' his mom says - this is the night after she falls, and he flies out, alone, to be with her. 'Don't let him fool you now, but... he was a real charmer back then. It was after your Gran-Gran passed, actually. We were both so young... and you know his parents never liked that I was Jewish. But he came and found me after the funeral. And he sat next to me and he said, I'll take care of you. And I believed him. I just-- I always believed him.'

* * *

Jack has no fucking clue what his problem is.

* * *

The thing is that Bev _is_ charming. 

Or she always makes him smile, at least. When his hair was long enough, she would braid it in his sleep, badly, and laugh at him when he woke up. He'd sit up in bed and his hair would be standing up at all weird angles. Meanwhile she laughed all raspy in his ear, her tongue pushed up behind the gap in her teeth.

The first time she did that was when he knew he loved her.

'I like that you're taller than me,' she says sometimes. She's half-freckle; all-leg. She played basketball all the way to college - still plays pick-up games at the rec sometimes. 'I get real tired of slouching.'

The only thing she knows how to cook is eggs: soft-cooked, fried, scrambled, sunny-side, hard-boiled; the occasional omelette. If she's feeling creative, she'll half-burn some rice for them both; if she's feeling generous, she'll let him steal some of her mom's kimchi.

He does the cooking. She does the laundry, the sweeping and vacuuming. He cleans the bathroom - obsessively - and the bedroom. They switch-off on the kitchen and living room and windows. They foster two dogs before they decide that their work schedules probably won't allow for a full-time pet.

They both like true crime. They regularly host karaoke nights at their place, though Bev's the only one out of their friend group who can really sing. They're in a book club with two other couples they met on vacation. (Jack suspects they're swingers.)

Neither of them wants kids. Jack doesn't believe in God; Bev wishes she didn't. She started him on Diriliş and is getting him into other dramas. He's gotten her into juicing. Well - she'll drink what he gives her, at least. Sometimes. Once in a while.

She teaches him how to talk when he's upset. She takes her hearing aid out when she wants the final word. She never teases him when he signs, even when he makes mistakes. She never shuts him out; she makes him want to let her in.

He feels like they're on the same team. He thinks if he could get married to anyone, it would be to her.

* * *

And yet. And yet.

* * *

He tip-toes around it - how he really feels. He doesn't want to lose her. And what he realises later is that she was just letting him tip-toe away, cus she trusted him to eventually... circle-back.

Except he never really does.  
  
So one night she turns to him in bed - his light is still on and he's browsing his work email, not cus he really wants to, but cus he doesn't feel like talking - and she signs, _Do you really want to get married?_

He puts his phone down. _Yes!_ he signs. _Yes - very much - maybe?_

'Maybe?' she says. She sits up in bed. She flicks on the light on her side, and puts back in her hearing aid. _What do you mean, maybe?_

Jack's heart is pounding. 'I mean, I do love you,' he says. 'And. I want to take care of you--'

Bev's already shaking her head. 'I don't need you to take care of me, Jack. I need you to be honest. I need to know if you want us to get married.'

* * *

Well. Jack picks a hell of a time to grow an opinion.

* * *

He ends up, two hours later, at a club he's definitely aged out of.

He's been nursing his drink for over half an hour. He thinks-- he sips his glass slowly --he thinks he may not like vodka anymore.

There's a lull in the music. The DJ covers the mic, talks to a man beside her. The people on the dance floor protest - loudly. 

Everyone out there looks so young. 

'Hey guapito - you ok?' Jack looks up. The bartender - the one with the cute smile - is looking at him.

The bartender is Gabe. 

On paper, Gabe is maybe the worst person for Jack to meet just then. He's hot, he's bi, he's single - more immediately, he's going on break, he's got condoms, _and_ he's got the key to the back room. 

Even if it just stopped at talking - and it will not - Jack could've figured out immediately that what he really needed to do was go home, sit down, and have a serious talk with Bev. I mean, he starts marking off levels in his mind within fifteen minutes of talking to Gabe, and that is definitely not a good sign. Like, flirting is wrong, but kissing is worse; kissing is wrong, but fucking is worse; fucking is wrong, but falling in love--

Well. Gabe is no Vincent: he is _not_ easy to fall in love with.

The first guy he slept with told him he did it on a dare. You know: lame, cruel shit. In what Gabe deemed an entirely proportionate response, he slept with the guy's dad, and eventually broke up his family. And that just... kind of became a blueprint for his life. 

He's vindictive now; overly competitive, snarly, kind of sarcastic. He does not want to talk about his feelings. He likes his mom, his best friend Gina, his sister Rocky, a couple of his cousins. He obviously adores his cat. But he doesn't really like people. He doesn't have the patience for them, unless they're-- homeless, or old. Or... wait-staff. Beyond that... well, he's friendly with his tattooist, his florist, his boss... he's polite with librarians, co-workers, and cops... he's cute with people he wants to fuck... He's largely indifferent to everyone else. 

He's never had an ex - he's never had a real relationship. 

The thing is that he doesn't want a relationship; he doesn't want an anything at all. He just wants to get fucked. He doesn't even really care about Jack as a person. Like, there's a totally obvious hue difference on Jack's left hand; he can fully tell that Jack took his ring off recently, he just does not care. 

But he can also tell - this is when they're in the back room kissing - that Jack is in over his head. It's either his first time with a man, or he's just very nervous.

Gabe remembers the way he trembled, his first time. The way his mouth was so dry when he got undressed; the way his hands sweat, and shook. He'd just wanted-- Mateo, ugh, that fucker's name was Mateo --he'd just wanted him so badly. And he'd felt so-- not even just scared. _Overwhelmed_. Like. He'd had too much of everything poured into him all at once. And Mateo hadn't mocked him, or treated him like shit - not when they slept together, at least. That came later; that came after. I mean, it's not like it was spectacular or anything. They were so young - they'd barely known what they were doing. 

Gabe had cried. Not because it hurt. Just cus he was-- I dunno. Relieved, maybe. Glad.

And Teo had held his hand. 

You wanna know what's really crazy? Teo had probably lied about the whole bet thing. Gabe figured that out, years and years later. It didn't make it all that much less lame or cruel, if it was true - maybe just a bit sadder.

But he remembers now, the way Teo treated him back then, before; the way he'd tilted up Gabe's head and said-- the way he'd said-- 

What did he say?

'Don't worry,' Gabe says, remembering. Jack will remember this, too: 'I'll take care of you.'

**Author's Note:**

> I. I am not Deaf/HoH. Please let me know if something I've written needs to change.
> 
> II. I've never seen _John Tucker Must Die_. Does he actually die in it? lol. I'm riffing on the title in a 'death of the author' kind of way. If John Tucker does not actually die, I may not be riffing much at all!
> 
> III. I didn't tag for it, but the beginning of Jack and Bev's relationship is not great: he definitely likes her, but he's living on her couch when they first get to know each other. He wouldn't be in a real position to comfortably decline her advances if he didn't like her. That said - he treats her really poorly in this.
> 
> IV. A 'soft-cooked' egg is just a soft-boiled egg. In showing Bev's range of cooking skills, I didn't want to use 'boiled' twice.


End file.
